Russian Revolution 1917 - further reading guide

Libcom's guide to further reading around the subject of the Russian revolution and counter-revolution of 1917 to 1921.

The Russian Revolution and Civil War, 1917-21 (WARNING: No work takes a more ideological and manufactured quality than histories of the Russian Revolution. Among the academics, Rosenberg, McAuley, Rabinowitch, Malle, Smith, Carr and Rigby have significant sympathies with the Bolsheviks; Medvedev, Fitzpatrick, Sirianni, Avrich, Sakwa, Remington, Aves, Lincoln, and Service are more critical, while Leggett, Figes and Shkliarevsky are openly right-wing. This is just a rough ideological guide for the unwary.)

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The Bolshevik Party in Conflict: The Left Communist Opposition of 1918 - R. Kowalski

from a 1980's english journal. But I may have lost the first pages. If I can find it I can add it to the Libcom archive by scanning it. It was concentrated on how left communists while being numerically in the majority lost the party struggle... Of course if it is the right article I remember

No that is not it. The article I refer to is an article about the 1918 communist left in Russia - probably by Kowalski. I will try to check for it tomorrow. I am going to move soon so everything is in boxes - that is the problem

Kowalski, Ronald I. The Bolshevik Party in Conflict: The Left Communist Opposition of 1918. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991. x + 244 pp. $34.95. One of Lenin's many challenges immediately following the October Revolution was the vehement and open opposition by leading figures within his own party to a number of his most important policies. Led by luminaries such as Bukharin and Radek, the Left Commu- nists were a loosely structured group who vigorously protested what they saw as Lenin's abandonment, on the altar of expediency, of socialist principles he had advocated only months earlier. The most important issue was the Left Communists' opposition to a separate peace with Germany, and their advocacy of continuing a "revolutionary war" which they thought would help spark proletarian revolution in Germany and elsewhere. In January and most of February 1918 they had the support of a majority of party members on this issue, although Lenin (just barely) won the debate at the top. They also attacked Lenin in other areas, including his willingness to parcel out land to the peasants, his call for one-man management at the expense of workers' control in industry, his utilization of former officials in the new state bureaucracy, and the eclipse of the autonomy of local soviets. But Lenin generally prevailed, and after the implementation of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, the Left Communists lost much of their grass-roots support. By midsummer the group had disinte- grated. Surprisingly, its former members were to follow very different routes in the 1920s and 1930s, some finding themselves in the so-called "Left Opposition," others in the "Right Opposition," still others becoming pillars of Stalinist orthodoxy. The Left Communist episode raises a number of interesting historical and political questions. Did the program of the Left Communists provide a blueprint for a truly demo- cratic socialist society that, if only implemented, would have prevented the abuses of Lenin- ist and Stalinist Russia? Was their program excellent in theory but doomed to fail owing to the recalcitrant political, social, and economic realities of Russia at the time? Or were the Left Communists emotional and irrational idealists, refusing to face the reality of their hopeless situation? The correct answer is "none of the above," according to Ronald I. Kowalski in this detailed study of Left Communist thought and action. True, they were intensely devoted to their cause and defended their positions with passion. But the author argues that their positions were determined more by cold calculation and logical extensions of long-held theoretical positions than by the passions or emotions of the moment. True, Russian condi- tions of the time were highly unfavorable to their cause. But Kowalski, who is intensely sympathetic to the Left Communists, nonetheless concludes, very reluctantly, that their program itself was fatally flawed. Their adherence to central economic planning and large- scale collectivized farming was inherently incompatible, he argues, with their belief in local economic and political autonomy. Even in the most ideal of circumstances, therefore, their program would have led, no less than Lenin's, to authoritarianism and coercion rather than to democracy and freedom. The author may exaggerate the extent to which his ultimate findings conflict with those
Book Reviews 441 found in the standard Western works that touch on the subject. His exclusive focus on doctrine and policy is somewhat narrow, and some readers may take exception to his linger- ing quasi-Marxism. Nonetheless, because the topic is important and because the book is well written, excellently organized, and tightly argued, The Bolshevik Party in Conflict is both a pleasure to read and a useful contribution to the field.

The article I have is definitely not that but probably a shorter article on the same topic by Kowalski.

This documentary is now on Youtube HERE. It could have had more on the involvement of women, workers and peasants in 1917 - and could have been more critical of the Bolsheviks. But it still contains some of the most amazing footage from the period.

One of the great puzzles of the February revolution is why, having initiated the revolution, working-class women were then unable to maintain this level of organisation in the upheavals of 1917. Bobroff-Hajal's well-researched book is, so far, the most in-depth attempt to understand the roots of this mystery. She vividly discusses women's roles in food riots, street fighting and political activism, as well as in courtship and wedding rituals. She concludes that traditional male-dominated culture tied working-class and peasant women to the nuclear family rather than to each other.

Working Women in Russia under the Hunger Tsars: political activism and daily life, by Anne Bobroff-Hajal

A detailed pamphlet on the history of the Italian anarchist resistance to fascism from the 1920s to 1945 and beyond by region. First published in 1973, translated to English by Alan Hunter and...

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